Kildin Sámi (Кӣллт са̄мь кӣлл)

Kildin Sámi is an Eastern Sámi language spoken on the Kola peninsula
of Russia by about 600 people. While the largest concentration of speakers
is around Lovozero (Луяввьр),
there are speakers of Kildin Sámi throughout the Kola peninsula. Although
Kildin Sámi is the largest of the Eastern Sámi languages in
terms of number of speakers, only about 100 people use it as an everyday
language.

Kildin Sámi has four dialects: the Kīllt dialect, the Koarrdegk dialect,
the
Lujavvʼr dialect and the Arsjogk dialect. It
has absorbed quite a lot of vocabulary from Russian, and also from Norwegian,
Karelian and Finnish, and is most closely related to Ter Sámi and Akkala
Sámi, which is sometimes considered a dialect of Kildin Sámi.

The first book written (partly) in Kildin Saami was a translation of
the Gospel of Matthew (Махтьвеест
пась-евангели)
published by the Finnish Literature Society in 1878 and written in the
Cyrillic alphabet. Kildin Sámi was written using a version of the Latin alphabet in
the 1930s, when a number of school books for children were produced. The language
was taught in schools and a literary language developed, though from the late
1930s due to changes in policy, Kildin Sámi was no longer used in literature.
After the Second World War research into Sámi language and culture started
again, and a work on Kildin Saami phonology, morphology and syntax by
the linguist G. Kert was published in 1971. A new Cyrillic-based
orthography was developed from 1979 and made public in 1982 with the
publication of Kildin Saami-Russian dictionaries and primary school textbooks.
It was widely accepted by 1987.

In 2008 a 15 minute weekly news bulletin in Kildin Sámi started
broadcasting on NRK, a Norwegian radio station.